The Dr. Josh Axe Show - How Stress, Grief, & Trauma Secretly Destroy Your Health

Episode Date: October 6, 2025

Most people think healing is about diet and supplements, but what if your deepest wounds are emotional? In this episode, I share my mom’s cancer journey and the powerful truth she discovered: unresolved grief, stress, and trauma can quietly sabotage your health. You’ll learn how hidden emotions disrupt the immune system and how faith, ancient wisdom, and modern science point to true healing from the inside out. Watch The Dr. Josh Axe Show every Monday & Thursday on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@drjoshaxe?sub_confirmation=1  🎧 Early Access! Our listeners enjoy every episode before anyone else! Tune in below and join our exclusive group of listeners →  Spotify: https://bit.ly/DrJoshAxeSpotify Apple Podcast: https://apple.co/3JDvWcS Order my NEW BOOK, The Biblio Diet → https://bit.ly/4oPEP3t Watch my free training on how to naturally balance your blood sugar and reverse your symptoms → DrAxeDiabetesClass.com  Discover practical steps you can take today to start healing your thyroid naturally →   DrAxeThyroidClass.com  If you’re ready to start feeling like yourself again and balance your hormones, take my free class → DrAxeHormoneClass.com  Uncover what’s really going on in your body with advanced biomarker testing for hormones, thyroid, and metabolism— plus a 1-hour consultation with a Senior Health Advisor! →  MyBloodWork.com  Watch my recently shadowbanned episode with Dr. Joel Gator where we talk about a controversial topic that is more important now than ever → https://youtu.be/JI9Ycorq99I CONNECT WITH DR. JOSH AXE Instagram→ https://www.instagram.com/drjoshaxe/ Facebook → https://www.facebook.com/DrJoshAxe/ TikTok → https://www.tiktok.com/@thedrjoshaxeshow/ X → https://x.com/drjoshaxe/ LinkedIn → https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshaxe Website →  http://thehealthinstitute.com Sign up for my newsletter → https://bit.ly/4oE9Jf3 Ask Dr. Axe → http://speakpipe.com/drjoshaxe   DISCLAIMER This content is strictly the opinion of Dr. Josh Axe and is for informational and educational purposes only. It is not intended to provide medical advice or to take the place of medical advice or treatment from a personal physician. All viewers of this content are advised to consult their doctors or qualified health professionals regarding specific health questions. Neither Dr. Axe nor the publisher of this content takes responsibility for possible health consequences of any person or persons reading or following the information in this educational content. All viewers of this content, especially those taking prescription or over-the-counter medications, should consult their physicians before beginning any nutrition, supplement or lifestyle program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Years ago when my mom was diagnosed with cancer for the second time, she knew she had to change her diet, take supplements and support her body physically, but there was something deeper holding her back from healing, something no doctor had ever addressed. She realized that she had spent her whole life as a people pleaser, carrying guilt and stress and emotional wounds she'd never processed. And it wasn't until she began releasing those patterns, healing from the inside out that her body could truly fully heal and recover. And science now confirms what my mom's story proves. Unresolved emotions like grief, anger, fear, and trauma can disrupt your immune system,

inflame your body, and even trigger disease. Today, I'm going to show you how emotional wounds can turn into physical illness and how ancient wisdom and biblical truth and cutting edge research all point to the same path for healing. Welcome to the Dr. Joshak show. So modern science now confirms what ancient healing systems have known for centuries that our emotions can directly impact our physical body and overall health. And when you're stressed, here's the first thing that happens. Your cortisol spikes, okay?

That stress hormone cortisol goes up. What that does is it starts to also cause insulin to spike. Now, when that happens, your immune system gets weaker. your digestive tract starts to inflame, your hormones get disrupted, and as I mentioned, insulin goes up, so your blood sugar raises, and that causes major health issues for really everyone. And so I've seen this for many years and practicing almost 20 years with patients that almost everybody is conscious of knowing that poor diet is causing physical health issues, lack of exercise, maybe toxins also impacting health, and even genetic. All those are contributors to your health. But a bigger contributor to your overall health, the thing that makes the single biggest impact is if somebody is going through emotional trauma.

And sometimes that emotional trauma is happening every single day because you have a childhood memory or you're living with shame and guilt or unforgiveness. And that is contributing to your health problem. You know, I've had so many patients with issues like inflammatory bowel disease. And I have one patient in particular, one of my first patients who had also, of colitis and they were coming in and we got them on a really clean diet and then one time they went and they had pizza and you know too much ice cream and a major flare you know they felt like a wreck for for a few days we got them back on the diet and they were feeling great again um and seeing great

improvements and then they had came in again and i said oh i said you know did you have did you have too much gluten or or dairy and they said no i haven't had any sort of uh you know i've been eating perfectly. Literally they said, I've been eating the best I've eaten in my whole life. And I asked a few more questions, and it turned out they just went through a breakup, major emotional turmoil, and that's why they were having those symptoms. So what can cause you to have a major inflammatory reaction or develop a disease like cancer and others isn't just diet. In fact, what can impact your body in an even bigger way is emotional stress. In fact, there are studies now showing that stress is linked to high blood pressure,

autoimmune conditions, cancer progression, heart disease, digestive disorders, neurodegenerative diseases, and metabolic disorders like obesity and diabetes. So the medical studies prove this as well, and there are so many people today who are only addressing half of the equation. And this might be why, maybe you've done some diet and some supplements and some lifestyle changes, and you improved by 50%. But you never experienced a full breakthrough in your health because they're still, some emotional turmoil and mindset issues that are making you sick. You know, there's a study that came out that said around 80% of doctor's visits are stress-related. So there is a stress component to 80% of medical conditions today.

And I know when I first opened my practice in National Tennessee, I'd have patients come in. And I would ask them oftentimes, hey, what did your other doctor have you do? And I remember one time a patient said to me, my doctor told me to reduce stress. and I said, that's great advice. What are they having you do for stress? They said, well, they didn't tell me what to do. They just told me, I need to reduce stress. And this is so common with so many people.

I think a lot of people know I need to reduce stress, but we don't know what to do for it. And so I'm going to get into that today as well. But I want to dive a little bit more into how emotions are impacting our physical health. You know, if you're sad or lonely, here's another thing that happens. You might crave sugar or eat more of it. Right. We know it's sort of the classic movie scene where there's a bad breakup. and, you know, the person in the break of eats a tub of ice cream and a full, you know,

and a full pizza themselves. Here's the other thing. Sugar affects your microbiome. Spikes your blood sugar, disrupt your insulin and leads to systemic inflammation. And that one emotional pattern can lead to a cascade of numerous other health problems. And there's support for this. There's a 22 study published in the Frontiers Journal and it found that psychological stress triggers immune dysregulation, which is a contributing factor in Kansas.

cancer in autoimmune disease, also in issues like, of course, part of autoimmune disease there under that umbrella could be lupus and rheumatitis. Another study published in the psychosomatic medicine journal found that long-term emotional suppression is associated with an increased risk of early mortality and with cancer. People in the top 25% of emotional suppression had a 35% higher risk of death from all causes and a 70% higher risk of death from cancer to those who expressed emotions more freely. So it's not just you feeling emotions. We should be releasing our emotions.

We should be sharing today so many people go into loneliness mode or sort of keep it to themselves and let it fester. It's like letting just a disease build and build and build rather than going and healing the area. And I want you to think about that. If you suppress your emotions, I ask yourself that question, do you kind of suppress your your emotions and not let them out. Well, your chance of cancer is 70% higher. And most of us understand the fact that sugar, parasites, different sort of infections, those can cause disease and build things like cancer in our body. But so can negative emotions like resentment, unforgiveness, loneliness, guilt and shame. Those things also build up disease within our internal organ systems. And there are

practices that focus on healing these that we'll get into as well. But it's just important to understand that health is so much connected to our physical and mental and emotional state. You know, there's a 2015 meta-analysis. So this is many studies that were brought in together. And we looked at loneliness in particular. And they found that social isolation in living alone, these were associated with a 26% to 32% increased risk of premature death. In fact, they say that sitting as a new smoking. You know what was actually even worse than sitting and being sedentary? Loneliness. It was that bad for our overall physical health. And so there are numerous, numerous studies showing that our mindset, our relationships, our emotional health is critical

for health and healing. Now, I want to dive into a form of medicine that really looks to take care of this head on. And it's called German new medicine. And it views diseases as a meaningful response to unresolved emotional trauma. And it's a system of pseudomedicestered developed by Dr. Reichgert Hammer, a German physician. And the belief here is that every disease originates from an unexpected emotional shock or event called a biological conflict, or known as Dirkhammer syndrome. And physical illness is not a mistake or a flaw, but a smart adaptation the body makes to protect itself. But oftentimes, once you get out of that initial protection,

you don't want to stay protected. You want to open things up so they can heal and get better. It's like this. Have you ever had a sports injury? I'll give an example for myself. I injured my back, okay? Had a major back injury, and my body, my muscles stiffened up,

my body created inflammation around the area, fluid to protect itself. So my body started a healing process to protect itself. protect itself, okay? And my body started bracing. Now, after I made it through that time of healing, here's the thing. My body stayed tight and constricted. However, in working with a lot of other practitioners, one of the things that I was taught was, listen, your body is over-protecting itself now. It's sort of in this protective state, and that's actually doing your body harm. Now we need to get it to stop protecting itself and let it know it's safe, it's secure, it can move, you can be

more fluid. You can get back to playing basketball and pickleball and lifting weights and swimming and all the things you want to do. But your body is having a hard time doing it because it still thinks that needs to be to be protected. So we need to take little steps over time doing certain types of exercises to show your body it's safe and secure. This same thing happens with people. You have a childhood trauma where somebody takes advantage of you as a child. And maybe there's physical abuse or sexual or some sort of verbal abuse. that happens. And so now in relationships, you don't get close to other people. You don't open yourself up to fully be loved. You keep secrets. You don't practice vulnerability. And so then your relationship

suffer, right? Well, these same things happen emotionally where we've had trauma happen when we were younger typically. And we hold on to that trauma still today, stay in protective mode. By the way, when your body is in a state of protection, it can't heal. Your body operates on a, a spectrum. Your body is in a fighter flight state. So what is your body doing when you were fighting or you're flying? You're protecting yourself, okay? When you're in a fight or flight state, you're not in the rest or digest state. That's when you are healing, regenerating. You're living in a state of peace and joy. And your healing's optimal. Okay. So for a lot of people today, the reason why you might be struggling with infertility, autoimmune disease, a cancer diagnosis,

is because you've had something happen in the past, some sort of trauma, and you've never got out of protection mode. You've lived in a state of protection so that area of your body can't heal. In Chinese medicine, they believe this is a major factor in what we call chi stagnation, and that's a main cause of cancer and disease, where blood and oxygen stop getting into the area because your body puts up walls and says, listen, I don't want to let anything get in or out of here. This is part of the protective mechanism. And so the area just stays inflamed and swamp-like rather than a living river where things should be flowing in and out constantly.

Again, nutrients, oxygen, blood. That stops happening and the area just gets really restricted. So we need to, in order to heal, open ourselves up and focus on healing the area of injury. And the area of injury for a lot of us, it's not a knee, it's not a low back. It's our heart. it's our soul it's our spirit and focusing on healing those areas and it's believed that whatever organ system is sick or organ systems it's due to unresolved trauma and different unresolved traumas affect different organ systems and by the way this has been believed in chinese medicine for thousands of

years but german new medicine has a different approach to it which we'll get into here's here's examples that german new medicine looks at breast cancer why does a woman get breast cancer Well, it's due to, according to German New Medicine, a nest worry conflict. So nest. Think about that sort of nest, and a mother bird over her kids. This is worry over your children in your home, okay? And if you are constantly worrying about your kids and your home and your safety and your security, those sort of things and you live in that state constantly, that's the root cause of breast cancer, according to German new medicine.

Ulcer of colitis is stemmed from a territorial anger conflict. You feel like somebody's encroaching on your area and your space, and that's make you angry and frustrated. Skin conditions like eczema may reflect a separation conflict, such as a feeling of being cut off from someone you love. I mean, this can happen to kids, you know, when you have multiple kids, not one kid, but two and three. Maybe a mom has to go back to work, or a child gets put in daycare. or there's a second child in a third, so the mother was giving the full attention and now not able to give the full attention to the child. So these sort of conditions can start to crop up based on those issues. Here's a few others.

Lung cancer may be linked to a conflict of a death fright conflict where you're fearing death in your future. Iritable bowel disease is indigestible anger that's experienced. And so we see different conditions are due to different emotions. that are being stored in these different organ systems. There are two phases of disease. Number one, conflict active, which can be things like stress, insomnia, and anxiety, and number two, post-conflict healing, which includes symptoms like fatigue and inflammation. In phase one, this is where you're experiencing stress and insomnia and anxiety and worry

around whatever conflict is taking place. And then in post-conflict, you may be experiencing fatigue. inflammation and other symptoms and knowing what emotional trauma occurred as well helped shift the body into healing and this is really where it starts this starts in all forms of healing knowing what happened when did the injury occur okay that's the first thing you want to do so I'll share this for myself I had a lot of mindset and emotional issues myself because I had a teacher my freshman year of high school tell me I couldn't be a doctor

And then I also had a doctor diagnosed me with ADHD and he told me I had a learning disorder. So I had a lot of emotional issues around that. And I was able to fully heal from that because I went back and said, okay, when did these occur? And think about it for yourself. Was there a teacher? Was there a pastor? Was there a parent? Was there a coach?

Was there a random person, a peer who said something to you. Okay. And it caused this emotional trauma. Okay. you want to pinpoint, what was that emotional comma? When did it occur? When did this whole thing start for me? Okay, that's very important.

Now, I want to walk you through kind of what this might look like for a lot of people in terms of this, this healing process. Once a conflict is resolved, like a reconciliation after being betrayed, this is when physical healing and symptoms like pain, fever, or fatigue often begin. And then once you know when that trauma occurred, you want to focus on resolving that conflict. Okay. It might be you need to go and forgive somebody. It might be needed to go and forgive yourself. It might need to be where you need to just recognize it happened and recognize, you know what? I'm going to see this in a positive light.

What did I learn from this experience that has allowed me to go stronger? And how can I use that to become more Christ-like, more virtuous? us. How can I use this for the good of others? Right? I think that's one of the most important things we can use is use our pain for purpose. And if you view your pain still, this thing you've had happened in the past, and you still see yourself as the victim versus the hero that's overcome something. And now you're using that for good to help others. Ask yourself that question. Think about that trauma you have in your life, that trauma that still bothers you today. Do you still see yourself as the victim?

if you do, you are not healed. Versus if you see yourself as the hero, I'm an overcomer. Hey, I learned from that lesson. I'm now better for it. That person was a hurt, you know, hurt people, hurt people, and you have a level of sympathy and empathy for that person that even maybe hurt you. Again, and some of these things are very difficult. And the greater the injury or the harm that was done to you, sometimes the harder it is to overcome. But it's important because if you don't do it, you can't fully heal.

And so you really want to, number one, recognize what was that issue and trauma? Number two, pinpoint the people involved, yourself involved, practice forgiveness, let go of shame and guilt with it. And then see yourself as the hero, not the victim anymore. And give it over to God, give it to him. And then now focus on moving on, okay? And open yourself. So I'm opening myself up to healing. Okay.

And then your body can start to heal. once that conflict is resolved, like a reconciliation after being betrayed as an example of that, now physical healing can start to begin. And listen, you might have a little bit of pain or fever or fatigue at the beginning of even the healing symptoms, but over time your body will start to heal and get better and better and better. Now, one of the biggest things that keeps us from healing is avoidance, okay? Sort of avoiding it. And most people, what happens is you've,

had been hurt at some point and you sort of shove it under the rug and your sometimes mind creates walls around it because you feel like it's too painful to bring back up but sometimes you have to create more pain in that temporary moment in that short term in order to experience full healing and the long term it's like this you know my wife had an ACL surgery on her knee many many years ago and you know starting i want to say it was three days after surgery she had to start bending and moving her knee as much as possible so that ACL reconstruction could be its optimal. And that's painful. But if she wouldn't have done that and she would have stayed in protection mode, her knee would have degenerated, more arthritis, it would have never gained back full function. So you want to do everything you can

to not avoid things and to actually go and address those things head on in healing them. Do you have unexplainable illness, hormone dysfunction, weight loss resistance, brain fog, and you're tired of being dismissed when you know something isn't right. Well, get my at-home testing of targeted biomarkers, including hormones, thyroid, and metabolism, plus a full hour with one of my senior health advisors to help you understand your results. The truth is your doctor's probably reading your blood work all wrong. They're missing the cellular issues behind the symptoms. This new testing flips the script.

The future of interpreting test results is here. I'm currently offering a simple at-home blood test that actually test for the right things. And just as importantly, it comes with proper interpretation of your results. If you want to check it out and grab one before they're gone, just go to mybloodwork.com now. One other area of German new medicine that's really powerful is they encourage patients to explore their life story and emotional triggers instead of focusing only on lab results. or their diagnosis. Okay, so here's what this looks like. You've been diagnosed with autoimmune disease. Let's call it Hashimoto's thyroiditis. Okay. And what you tend to look at is, what are my TPA, what are my antibodies? What are my T3 and T4 levels? Right? You're looking at these

thyroid hormones. You're looking at the diagnosis of Hashimoto's. You're focused in on that. What German new medicine says is don't focus on those things. What you should be focusing on is your life story and emotional triggers. Okay. How's your relationship with your mom? What are the biggest things from your past that still bother you today? What triggers you emotionally? Write those things down. Now go and focus on healing those areas.

And when you heal those areas emotionally, your lab results, those will get better. So you don't focus on the lab results. That's not going to help you heal. You focus on healing the emotional trauma. I mean, I think about this like doing a micronutrient test. You know, I do micronutrient tests with patients and basically looking, what are all the nutrients they're deficient in. Okay, we got vitamin C here.

Let's go and address that. Let's get more, let's have you eat more grapefruit in kiwis and broccoli, right? These vitamin C rich foods, let's do some of that in order to boost your immune system, right? So you want to be able to know what that issue is. So improving your diet, that's a big part of it. But the other big part is we've been talking about is addressing that emotional trauma. Now, I want to cover, according to German new medicine, some of the biggest triggers that cause people to be sick.

Here's a few. Receiving news that was difficult to take in, digest or comprehend. You know, I had this happen about a year and a half ago when my father-in-law passed away. I mean, when I was told over the phone that he, I went on a one-day trip, I'd seen him the day before. I was hanging out with him every day. And I was told that over the phone, I remember, it was sort of, you know, almost, it was hard for me to accept, right?

And that was an example of that for me personally. So what is that for you? Was there something that happened where you got a piece of news that was difficult to digest or even comprehend? Here's another one. A loss or separation. This could be a divorce. It could be a death. It could be a child moving away from home.

You know, it could be any of those things. A job loss, income loss. So those are examples, too. A personal attack, such as an offending remark or physical. abuse, a life-threatening situation like an accident or medical emergency. Again, somebody saying something, again, going back to a personal attack, somebody said, you're not smart enough, you're not pretty enough, you're over your fat, you know, somebody saying something harmful to you. And even if they didn't say it directly, they made you feel that way, right? These are all

things that hurt us. And if we don't go back to that memory, uh, and, Remember it and let it go and allow God to heal our hearts. It will continue to build disease in our body. And here's an example of how this works, according to one study. People living with an autoimmune disease are nearly twice as likely to suffer from a mood problem like depression, anxiety, or bipolar. The risk of mood disorders is 87% to 97% higher in people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, inflammatory bowel disease, lupus, multiple sclerosis, psoriasis, and graves disease, okay? So if you have a mood disorder, and here's how it happens a lot of times, somebody said something negative to you about you,

okay? It could be that, hey, you know, you're not working hard enough or, gosh, you're so dumb, why did you do that? And then here's what happens. That gives you a level of depression. Now, here's the other thing that happens, and it's believed in autoimmune disease. Autoimmune disease is where your body starts attacking itself, okay? So Hashimoto's thyroiditis is where your body is attacking its own thyroid tissue. Maybe it's recognizing it being similar to gluten, okay? But that's sort of happening. Your body's attacking itself.

So, but emotionally what happens with people in autoimmune disease is they're emotionally attacking themselves. And that's what's causing their body to then physically attack itself. So if you ever do anything like this to yourself, you say, why did you do that? That was so dumb. I shouldn't have said that. Have you ever done anything like that where you're very hard on yourself? And oftentimes it stems from your parents were very hard on your.

your parents were critical. I have somebody, one of my close friend of mine, and his mom was incredibly overcritical and judgmental of him. I mean, everything he did, she critiqued, and he was always wanting her approval. So now he's constantly hard on himself and beating himself up. And then he also developed psoriasis, an autoimmune disorder. Okay. So this happens in a lot of people, when we look at why did you develop this specific disease?

It's rarely genetic. Typically, it's emotional. Now, I want to walk you through what German new medicine says in terms of how to physically heal from this trauma. And I've hit on some of them, but I want to walk you through the whole process. Number one, reflect on the emotional shock that occurred before your symptoms started. Okay. So what was that thing that you believe really kicked off that past trauma that still bothers you today? Journal and pray about it and experience the process again.

So I want you to sort of visualize and pray through and say, God, bring this to me. What is this thing that's bothering me today? write it down in journal all about it, okay, and then seek reconciliation or release of that conflict through therapy or spiritual healing, okay? Seek reconciliation. Forgive, let go, you know, release, see yourself as the hero in the story, the overcomer, write down it. How could that be used for your good? How could God use that for good? Write those things down. There's also inner childwork therapy or prayer to help resolve stored emotional trauma and removing fear around your diagnosis

which helps stop the ongoing stress response. All these are important parts of that healing process. So again, what German new medicine does is it says every disease condition for the most part. There is an emotional component. Now listen, there are a few diseases out there here and there where let's say you were drinking lead or asbestos or we're in a major car accident, right?

these are traumas that may not have as much of an emotional component, but 80% plus, the majority of our chronic conditions, like cancer and autoimmune disease and hormone imbalances, the greatest tie to those, according to German new medicine, is our emotional state in things like childhood trauma. So going and healing those is so important. Listen, this is something you shouldn't skip. It's something you should go after. And I get the best results with patients when we go after both, when we focus on that physical healing with diet and lifestyle and supplementation and all those issues, and we focus on building and fostering this healthy mindset and emotions at the same time. So you really want to do both simultaneously. I also want to

mention once you feel like you've been able to address and identify that past trauma, okay? So it's like detoxification, right? We want to detox and eliminate that painful trauma, painful emotions, bad sort of mind patterns. And then we also want to support our emotions by living the way God designed us to live. And there are four emotions I want to talk about before I get into the Chinese medicine and the biblical mindset with this on how to heal your emotions. So hormonally, you want to focus on supporting four hormones in your body. Oxytocin, dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin.

Now, oxytocin today, I believe, is the hormone we are most efficient in in terms of supporting. It's known as the love hormone or the connection hormone. You're going to get oxytocin. Actually, it's released in the highest levels when a mom is breastfeeding a newborn child. In fact, I've heard my wife and my sister were talking about this recently, where they were talking about sort of this euphoric stage, just this deep connection they feel when breastfeeding and nursing. So it's there.

The other time you're feeling the most is during sexual intercourse. Okay. So there's this sort of hormones being released of oxytocin where you're feeling deeply emotionally connected to the other person. Also socializing, physical touch. So it's deep, intimate conversations with people where you feel like you're really connecting. It's hugging. It's high-fiving.

It's petting and hugging your animals. Helping and serving others as well. This is where you're going to get the greatest levels of oxytocin release. And these are all things we're greatly deficient, and especially coming out of COVID and a lot of the other things politically where it's like you can't, you know, like hugging coworkers. And I mean, I know, you know, in my, my clinical practice, we, uh, you know, we encourage hugging. I used to have one of my staff members and she was like the chief hug officer.

I was walking around and because I knew that hugging and encouragement and putting your hand on someone's shoulder, looking them in the eyes and connecting with them deeply and giving them a word of encouragement is so important to healing in health. So oxytocin, this hormone about healthy, quality, physical touch and connecting with others relationally is the biggest hormone we want to start supporting in order to heal our hearts and our emotions. The other one is dopamine. Now, unfortunately today via social media, especially like Instagram and Facebook and TikTok is the worst of them on this, but this sort of scrolling, doom scrolling constantly, dopamine is connected to the reward channels in your brain. It's your reward

chemical. If you ever see a slot machine, somebody sitting in a slot machine, it's basically achieving a goal, okay? And so for you, when you like something or someone likes what you do, that's sort of like, oh, there's a mini goal there. You also get more dopamine when you eat certain types of food, like things that are very sugary, completing a task, like checking a task off your list, that's dopamine. And then sometimes certain self-care activity. So listen, dopamine is a good hormone, but a lot of us are getting too much dopamine from, in an unhealthy way and not enough oxytocin, okay? Because dopamine is more connected to, listen, oxytocin tends to be where you're connecting with people. Dopamine is where you're connecting with a thing or a task, okay? We need more

oxytocin. Number three, hormone, you need to start healing your health and your emotions and your full body is endorphins. These are natural painkillers. This is tied to movement, especially exercise, listening to music you love, watching a positive movie. and laughter, okay, endorphins are released. This is where you get like this runner's high, right? That feeling where if you're just laughing and you feel that overwhelming sense of emotion, endorphins. So it's really movement and having fun.

That's how you're going to have those. And then serotonin. These are known as the mood stabilizers. This is where a lot of people take antidepressants. There's SSRIs, right? These serotonin drugs that people take. These are the mood stabilizers. Your greatest way to get serotonin is sunshine.

So the more sun you get, serotonin you get, mindfulness. So spending time in prayer, meditation, reading a spiritual growth book, attending a Bible study, but just going deep spiritually, that boosted serotonin, being with nature. So just hiking and walking, being the mountain snow skiing on the water, that helps boost serotonin as well. So those are the biggest serotonin boosters that you can have. But most of us, again, too much dopamine, not enough oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins. And you You can do it by connecting with people, connecting with nature, and do having fun. And so here's what Chinese medicine believes is that different emotions impact and cause disease in different organ systems, very similar, a little bit different different.

And so Chinese medicine looks at five different organ systems in the body, and it knows that different emotions impact different organ systems, both for the positive or the negative. And the first thing I reference in Chinese medicine is focusing on healing the body emotionally and practically. So if somebody is dealing with, here's an example, if somebody is dealing with major digestive distress, the practitioner is going to say, hey, are you dealing with some emotional distress? Is it worry? What are you worried about? And the person said, well, I realized I'm worried about my kids. I'm worried about my work. I'm worried about this. And they'll say, okay, well, that's causing digestive issues. And they're bringing an awareness there to the worry. Now, a lot of Chinese medicine practitioners may not go beyond that in giving recommendations, but some do. There's a Chinese medicine practitioner and acupuncturist that I work with, and he does recommend in his practice things you can start to go to do to heal from worry and get over worry. And for him, he's Jewish. And so he recommends going to the Bible and meditating on certain Bible verses like Joshua 1-9 where God says, be strong and courageous. You know, don't worry. I'll be with you wherever you go. So there's some advice there in that. But overall, again,

very practical in terms of being aware of the emotion your experience and start to create healthy lifestyle habits and practices to deal with that emotion. Now, the next thing in Chinese medicine that's typically used for healing your body even emotionally is acupuncture. This involves inserting a very thin needle into a meridian point, which different areas of the body are connected to different organs. And that allows blood flow and energy and oxygen to flow to that area. And that can sometimes help people more quickly resolve their grief, anger, and anxiety is the way that works. Herbal medicine is often used in Chinese medicine as well. So if somebody has a digestive issue like we talked about, they might recommend you drinking ginger herbal tea daily or taking an herb like

a straggilus or adding more cardamom to your food and fennel, and that's going to help the digestive track. And so they're going to recommend that as well. And then they're going to recommend dietary therapy. So not just herbals and herbal teas. but also foods. And so it might be, again, doing more root vegetables like sweet potatoes and pumpkin and butternut squash in order to ground and help heal the digestive system. And then they also recommend a lot of breathing, energy movement being outside barefoot with something called Chi Gong. Today we call it things like box breathing, but they created a system for breathing in order to move oxygen throughout your body and help your body release emotions that were stuck.

And so Chinese medicine had really an incredible five-part system there for helping people heal from chronic disease. And so they took on the emotions, not only from the emotional standpoint, as in German new medicine, but helped try and focus on addressing and be conscious of the emotion, fostering positive emotions to combat it, and then other therapies as well in order to heal. Now, there is a 2019 meta-analysis in the Journal of Clinical Medicine, and I found that acupuncture significantly reduced depression symptoms, likely through Vegas nerve stimulation, reduced cortisol levels, and anti-inflammatory effects, and releasing neurotransmitters like serotonin and noradrenaline.

And so we see that Chinese medicine acupuncture is helpful against this. And there's also studies showing that Chi Gong, this type of breathing supports relaxation and improve symptoms related to depression, anxiety, addiction, and PTSD. And so when it comes to Chinese medicine, this is a practice that, again, is looking at the whole body and helping it heal from an emotional standpoint. I will say that there are other techniques that maybe typically go deeper into the root cause of the emotion and helping heal that specifically, but overall, as a practice, it is something that is very aware that does help bring awareness and as a whole can help heal people dealing with emotional mental and spiritual issues.

Now, finally, I want to go through biblical medicine, and this is healing through faith, forgiveness, and community. And I want to say what German new medicine does really well is it helps address those childhood traumas. It brings them to the surface. I think that's so important. Chinese medicine does such a great job with sort of the specific lifestyle practices. But what the Bible does better than both is it says, okay, Jesus is your healer. Okay. The Bible is good medicine. And it has great practical advice on healing your body physically, mentally, and spiritually. And I think it's important. One of the things that happens a lot of times in these sort of Eastern medicines and practices, it does a good job of emptying yourself, but not always a good job of

helping you fill yourself with the greatest thing, and that's the Spirit of God, and focusing on hope and love and joy. And so filling your cup with those things. And the Bible does that better than anything. You know, biblical medicine is rooted in the idea that spiritual health is the foundation, the greatest foundation for your physical health. And the Bible speaks of healing through faith, prayer, community, gratitude, and the renewing of our minds. You know, Proverbs 1722 says this, a cheerful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. Think of that. A cheerful heart. What is a cheerful heart? Praising gratitude, thankfulness, right? A cheerful heart. Being cheerful and grateful and joyful, it's good medicine, right? It's good medicine. And so the Bible shares some of these things

we need to do in order to start to heal our emotions. And I would say that these are more powerful than any other form of medicine when it comes to biblical medicine and meditating on the Word of God and asking Jesus to physically heal you. Here's how it works. So many of us today live with sin, bitterness, shame, guilt, unforgiveness, and unhealed wounds. And these are, and they have spiritual roots that take up place and start to breed physical illness in our bodies. And healing comes through confession, prayer, faith, communion, and surrender to God's will. The Bible teaches us that faith can restore your health.

You know, Mark 534 says, your faith has made you well. There's a woman there who is bleeding for many, many years. And she simply touches Jesus, and she's healed. And Jesus said to her, your faith has made you well. Jesus says this constantly throughout the Bible when you read the New Testament. He says, it's your faith that has made you well. Faith in what? Faith in Jesus.

Faith that he can heal you, that perfect person that died for you, that loves you unconditionally, faith in him that he loves you, that he cares for you, that he can heal you, that faith will heal you. So it's belief in God's healing power that has been shown to reduce stress hormones and improve outcomes, even in scientific studies today. In prayer and worship, create neurochemical shifts that also calm your nervous system. So I do think there's some things that happen. We know via a placebo effect, a scientific effect of what happens when you believe and have faith, but I believe there's something supernatural that happens there as well. You can take back control of your metabolism, your energy, and your hormones naturally.

I've put together an in-depth, practical training to help you balance your hormones using powerful foods, herbs, and natural lifestyle strategies that actually work. If you're ready to start feeling like yourself again, go to Dr.axhormoneclass.com or click the link in the description to begin your healing journey today. That's Dr.axhormoneclass.com to take back your health naturally. One of the areas of healing, and I would call it sort of a spiritual detoxification, that the Bible talks about, is forgiveness and confession. You know, Ephesians 426 through 27 says this,

in your anger, do not sin. Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold. I mean, he's saying it's so important here that if you're living in anger and any sort of bad, sort of any sort of negative emotion or vice, do not let the sun go down while you're still angry. Okay, don't even let the sun go down. Go and resolve it right now. What most people do is we don't confess and we just take whatever we have.

We shove it under the rug. And not only do we not, not only do we let the sun go down, we let the sun go down. We let the sun go down for 10, 20, 30 years and live with these unhealthy emotions over and over and over again. The Bible is clear and urgent in its call to resolve this now. Matthew 6.14 through 15 says, for if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your father will not forgive your sins. you know, unforgiveness is one of the most damaging things to our health. In fact, in Chinese medicine

even, they believe that forgiveness is tied to two things. It's a sort of anger and resentment and bitterness towards another person to something they did, not even currently, but in the past. So that's going to affect your liver and your immune system, and it's probably the greatest driver of cancer emotionally is unforgiveness, according to that form of medicine. Now, Again, the Bible is clear and it talks about forgiveness constantly throughout the Bible and other emotional burdens like guilt and shame and bitterness and how they affect our health. And in the New Testament, I believe in James, it says, you know, go and confess your sins unto the Lord and also confess them sometimes to elders and to other people you can trust, right?

So we're called to confess. We're called to forgive. if you hold on to sins without confession, without forgiveness, it builds disease in your body. And studies show that forgiveness reduces cortisol, inflammation, and even proves your immune system marker. So there are studies showing the healing power of forgiveness. And so I'd encourage you, think about, and one thing you might do is just take time and write down. Who do I need to forgive? Maybe it's yourself, even, maybe it's God, but who do you need to forgive?

Not that God needs forgiveness, but some of it's something. Sometimes we blame God for things that he didn't do. And so just recognizing that. So who do you need to forgive? What do you need to confess? What are the things you've been doing done wrong? And what are some of the vices and just negative, maybe mindset you've been carrying as well? Write those things down.

And then confess those to the Lord. Okay. Spend some time and confess. And then repentance of saying, God, I'm so sorry that I've done these things wrong. Help heal my heart. Okay. This is what the Bible teaches us to do. And then once you do this spiritual detox and you confess and you repent,

then it's time to fill yourself with the new, with purpose, with hope, with love, with joy. You know, things like meaning, belonging, and trust in God's plan are seen as critical for emotional resilience in the Bible. And then once you forgive and confess and repent and change your ways in being obedient to God, then the next step is filling yourself with faith, hope, and joy, with the virtues, okay? Also living with purpose and hope and more community, you know, meaning and belonging and trusting God's plan are seen as critical for emotional resilience. You know, and also, I would say this, seeing yourself in the right light the way God sees you with that type of identity, that you were a sinner, but now you're a saint, you're redeemed.

God has called you to do great and mighty things, okay? And so seeing yourself in the right light with a God-given identity knowing you're the child of God, it's so critical to see yourself in the right light. And even seeing yourself as you go through hard times, you know, the book of James also says, like, you know, take joy, my brothers, when you face trials of any kind, because the testing of your faith helps you develop perseverance. So even when you're, whenever we talked about earlier, like when you live in a victim state, you stay sick. versus when you see yourself and know, okay, I'm an overcomer, I'm becoming a hero in that story.

Now you want to be honest with yourself, okay? Hey, I saw myself as a victim. Now I want to see myself as a hero. And in thinking about how God can use whatever you've gone through for good, starting to focus on it in a different perspective and more of a positive light, no matter how much harm was done. That's incredibly healing. So James says, listen, when you are tested, don't have a victim mind. mindset, have a conquer mindset, knowing that you are getting stronger, you're becoming more resilient, greater perseverance when you go through hard times. That's the mind of sort of that hero that you want to have. So there's a mindset there, a biblical mindset you want to have as you go through trials in life. You know, it's so easy when we're having a really hard time in life when we're going through, let's say maybe you think you could lose your job. There's a couple ways to go through this and thinking you could be let go. One, you could live in a state of worry and thinking, I'm going to a victim, this is unfair, and living in that state. Now, listen, it's okay to have those feelings

and to live there for maybe a moment, but it's not going to help you to live there longer. It's going to hurt you. Versus thinking, you know what? I'm going to keep working hard. I'm going to keep honoring God. You know what? God probably has a better job opportunity for me. This isn't the best place for me to work. I can probably contribute more somewhere else. Right? So it's having that sort of mindset when you go through trials that's a form of biblical medicine. You know, when I had my infection and I couldn't walk for the year and I was so, so sick, I had to take those thoughts of feeling like I might never walk again or I might never fully heal. And I had to flip it and I say, you know what, I'm going to be more spiritually resilient. I'm going to be more mentally resilient.

I'm going to be more physically resilient. I'm going to use this time to connect with my family. I'm going to write a book. I'm going to praise God through the storm, right? And so it's hard to do, but we're called to do it and it will lead to the best outcome. A few other things. the Bible talks about that are medicine for us. One is community, connection with others. Community-based worship is a great thing as well. But just attending church every week, once a week, twice a week, more than that, but just going and connecting with other people and praising God together, learning together, serving others together, this community-based connection is a key form of biblical medicine. And then living in a state of gratitude and praise, we know in studies that actually boost serotonin

and reduce inflammation. And think about what James says in the book of James. He says, consider it pure joy when you face trials of many kinds. Think about this. When you were going through a trial, consider it pure joy, gratitude, praise. God, thank you that I can go through this hard trial so I can become more like you as I go through it. You know, when I remember when we were first having COVID. Do you guys remember back to that first couple years, 2020, 2021, when all the lockdowns were happening and all of the crazy, you know, crazy things the government and the CDC were recommending. And I remember feeling discouraged for a moment thinking, gosh, I can't believe that people are so blind and that we don't understand, that people are not seeing that what we need

through this is just to live through God's design by eating healthy and spending time in the sun. And like, I was discouraged. I don't know how many of you guys were discouraged as we went through the first couple years of COVID. And then I was with a pastor. And we were talking about something. This was very early on in the pandemic. And I said to him, I said, you know what? I've just been a little bit disappointed in the way some people have acted.

And we were talking about some of the challenges. And he said something to me like, you know, Josh, one of the things I've had a change of heart is, and he said, God, I felt like God told me this, is that I should take joy in this trial right now. because as a leader, a leader gets to shine in times of trial. He said, you said, Josh, you know, you're a leader. And this is now your time to shine and make the biggest difference. He said, if there was no civil war, I don't know how many people would know who Abraham Lincoln was.

He said, so, you know, when you are going through a hard time where there's a challenge in front of you, is like, you know, this is a time where you get to shine and make the biggest difference during challenges. You get to make the biggest change possible. And I really had a shift in mindset around that. I said, you know what, this COVID issue, this is not a something to be depressed about. It's something to see as a challenge where I can do the greatest good. So there's a mindset there, a biblical mindset when we're going through any challenge in life. There's a study published in the Journal of American Medical Association, and this was done on 74,000 women.

And they found that women who attended religious services more than once a week had a 33% lower risk of dying from all cause, mortality. Think about that. Just going to church once a week for women, 33% less mortality and better longevity. People who attend religious services are significantly less likely to die from deaths of despair, including suicide, overdose, and alcohol poisoning according to the Harvard School of Public Health. And another health review in a psychology journal found that prayer and spiritual practices significantly improved immune system health, stress levels, and even pain tolerance. This is believed to be linked to the positive emotions and social connections. And many studies suggest that prayer and meditation can activate relaxation pathways, lowering cortisol, and helping your body heal at a higher level.

Even just doing 10 minutes a day, according to one study, 10 minutes a day of prayer and meditation, significantly reduce stress in college students and help them foster more gratitude, hope, and positive emotions. So we know that science proves this. We don't need science to prove it, but we know it does. and here are some actions to take in terms of biblical medicine. Number one, practice daily prayer in scripture meditation. Focus on a single verse or truth and just chew on it, pray on it, think about it, okay? You know, this is something my mom did with cancer. We had about 20 Bible verses, and my mom said them over and over and over again.

Do that for yourself. Think about that. If you are a spiritual religious person or not, go and look up 10 Bible verses about healing. and say them three times a day every day. And then also believe and see and know that you're going to be healed. And ask Jesus to heal you and see what happens. So practice daily healing. Number two, participate in weekly communion and fellowship with others.

Going to church. You can even practice communion at home with your family, taking some bread, some blood, and knowing that was Jesus' body and his blood given for you. Number three, confess your burdens and your unforgiveness to a trusted pastor. or mentor, somebody that you trust there. Forgive, release your burdens. We're called to do that in the Bible. And then again, forgive and release those who have hurt you and release that bitterness. And then

believe that healing is possible. Have faith. Says in Proverbs 1821, the tongue has the power of life and death. And I want to share with you due to my father-in-law passing. I mean, these are things that are very personal to me that I've experienced myself. So one, I've counseled people in healing, thousands of patients in using not just diet to help them heal but also the Bible and spiritual focuses in Germany and medicine in Chinese medicine but focusing on those emotional roots to heal it works it is incredibly powerful for everybody not some people for everyone it makes a big difference in their healing I experienced as myself when I lost my father-in-law about a year and a half ago I had to go through a healing process of forgiving you know I

I even had to forgive myself. I'm going to be honest about something and vulnerable. I thought my father-in-law had a heart attack and I thought to myself, you know, I should have done more in terms of, you know, diet with him and in urging him to do certain things more. And I didn't do it. So I had to forgive myself. And I had to, you know, I had to go through a grieving healing process. And I had to go through some of the moments. I had to, you know, forgive myself for some things. I need to spend some time. in prayer. And then also, you know, eating certain things and exercise and doing certain things to also help me relieve grief and stress and a number of things. But this is a process I just went through. You know, I actually had during my time afterwards, I had some physical ailments that from soon after he had passed.

And I had him for about a year. And then they went away about a year after his passing. But again, these are things that I just personally went through. And so I want to encourage you, if you've dealt with it. any childhood trauma, if you have any negative emotions or that you worry a lot or you get angry a lot or you're fearful a lot or you have something in the past that still bothers you today, go and address those issues head on using German new medicine, that Chinese medicine we talked about and the most powerful one, that biblical medicine to heal to overcome the trauma,

the grief, the fear, the bitterness. Because we know medically it suppresses your immune system, it disrupts your gut, it triggers inflammation autoimmunity. And if you use these two, tools, it can help you heal. Hey, thanks so much for tuning in here to the Dr. Josh Jack show. Remember each and every week we're diving deep into the science and principles of how you can heal physically, mentally, and spiritually. Also, a big thank you to all of you that are subscribed. That's what the number one thing you can do to support the show here is be a subscriber so you don't miss out. You know, I've actually had a few of my videos over the past few years shadow band. Okay. I had one. I just recorded that I thought was going to be one of our biggest

podcast ever in YouTube Shadow Bandit. Okay. So if you're not subscribed, you may not have these episodes actually show up in your YouTube feed or on your or in your inbox. So just make sure you're subscribed so you don't miss out on the content. And also thank you all of you that are sharing this content. You know there are so many people that are hurting out there mentally and emotionally. They don't know that these are the root cause of their disease. So thanks so much for sharing this as well. And I can't wait to see you on the next episode.